Updated 5:19 pm, Tuesday, November 6, 2012

A 3-D laser scan of Mission Dolores can provide exact measurements throughout the 221-year-old building.

A 3-D laser scan of Mission Dolores can provide exact measurements throughout the 221-year-old building.

Photo: -, CyArk

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Project manager Scott Lee of CyArk, an Oakland nonprofit that is working to document all 21 of California's Spanish missions with modern technology.

Project manager Scott Lee of CyArk, an Oakland nonprofit that is working to document all 21 of California's Spanish missions with modern technology.

Photo: -, CyArk

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A 3D laser scan from inside the Mission of the Reredos at Mission Dolores.

A 3D laser scan from inside the Mission of the Reredos at Mission Dolores.

Photo: -, CyArk

A new look inside 221-year-old mission

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Mission Dolores, the oldest intact building in the Bay Area, has gone digital. At the end of last week, equipment using pulsed laser beams scanned the 221-year-old building to complete the first three-dimensional picture of the mission.

The lasers measured every corner of the building, from the familiar white facade that faces the street to the rafters in the attic, still held together with rawhide beams.

Though there have been conventional blueprints of the old mission over the years, there has been nothing like this. The lasers can look inside the walls and provide exact measurements of the building's nooks and crannies.

"We are using new tools to bring old sites to life," said Tom Greaves, executive director of CyArk, an Oakland nonprofit that is running the project. Mission Dolores was the first of California's 21 Spanish missions to get the full treatment. Eventually, Greaves said, the company plans to document all the missions, plus the surviving buildings of the four presidios and three pueblos built during the Spanish and Mexican period in California.

"We are using 21st century technology on 18th century buildings," Greaves said.

A three-dimensional digital picture of the mission can serve several purposes. One is in seismic retrofitting of the buildings, which were constructed of adobe brick with wooden rafters and support beams and are highly vulnerable in earthquakes.

Billions of laser measurements were taken this spring of the walls and roof of Mission San Carlos Borremeo in Carmel and were then used in a seismic retrofit project currently under way.

The project included replacing the roof and driving steel rods into the ancient walls to stabilize them. The roof project is complex because the tile roof is supported by a series of wooden trusses and braces. The exact measurements that result from laser technology make it easier to create replacement parts.

Earlier this year, CyArk took measurements of the quadrangle complex at Mission San Luis Rey in San Diego County, a project that would have taken months to complete using conventional methods. The lasers did the job in 3 1/2 days.

The 3-D pictures also help the missions' staffs tell the story of the missions, said Andrew Galvan, curator of Mission Dolores. Galvan is a descendant of Ohlone Indians - one of his ancestors was baptized in Mission Dolores in 1794. "Native people built these buildings," he said, "And we have 10 generations of history in this room."

Galvan said Mission Dolores is developing a mobile app that will allow anyone anywhere to look inside the mission and its grounds.

CyArk - the name is a combination of cyber technology and archaeology - has worked on 70 sites worldwide. Notably, laser measurements have been taken of Mount Rushmore, Chitzen Itza in Mexico, and the site of the ancient city of Babylon in Iraq.

The nonprofit hopes to raise $1.5 million to complete the project involving the missions, all strung along El Camino Real, the road that linked the Spanish settlements in California.

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